Blue Eyed Matador
by Translucent Darkness
Summary: Oneshot. Songfic. After Dumbledore's death, he finds that he must fight for his place in heaven. Oddly enough, Luna Lovegood is there as well, and Dumbledore discovers a terrible truth. Not DH compatible.


A/N: The song I'm using for this songfic is "Blue-Eyed Matador" by Voltaire. Enjoy!

Disclaimer: I don't own HP or "Blue-Eyed Matador."

* * *

When he awoke there was one thing he knew: he was cold. Freezing actually._ This is no way to treat an old man, _Professor Albus Dumbledore, Headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardy, thought indignantly. He shifted slightly, feeling smooth rock beneath him. _They laid me on _stone_! And when comfy beds are so easy to conjure, too._

_Here, on the slab I awake  
And I'm freezing_

Dumbledore opened his eyes slowly and took in his surroundings, or rather, the lack-thereof. It was dark all around him, and not even new moon darkness. This was _cave_ darkness. The kind that originated from no light whatsoever, the kind that fostered pasty white skin and blindness. Despite this, however, the aged professor could see himself and the rock he was laying on quite clearly. They were spelled he assumed. He quickly searched his robes for his wand before sighing, empty-handed. He searched about on the slab of polished marble that was his bed but still couldn't find it. Dumbledore winced in realization that he'd have to make do without it.

Examining the supposed cave, Dumbledore's eyes lit upon a curious sight. It was a light, a blessed thing assuredly, but it was speeding towards him at an alarming pace. Dumbledore was about to switch his summation from cave to muggle subway tunnel containing a speeding train when he realized that the light wasn't actually moving. No, _he _was moving. Having left his slab of stone behind long ago, Dumbledore, suspended in the air, sped toward the light.

_There is a light up ahead  
And I rise and float through the air  
Through a tunnel  
Now the light's up ahead_

Dumbledore was interested to find himself in what appeared to be a sports arena. The stands seemed to be filled with spectral fans cheering or booing heatedly. They were generally shapeless, ghostly forms that had a general humanoid body but were undulating and smooth and faceless like mist.

In one corner stood a large beast. A bull. A large black bull, its hulking muscles rippling beneath pure black hide. Two onyx horns rose threateningly from its head, just above dark, red eyes that glowed like the hottest embers left from a dying fire.

_Here, in a bullring I stand  
Am I dreaming?  
There is a bull up ahead_

_I'm dead, _Dumbledore thought. _I'm actually dead._ It wasn't his death that truly bothered Dumbledore; it was the circumstances that were so saddening. He had forced a good friend to murder him while Harry watched. Poor Harry. His mentor dead, seemingly betrayed by someone whom Harry had doubted the entirety of his stay at Hogwarts. A teenager left to face the darkest wizard the world has ever known. Dumbledore sighed. There was nothing to be done. It seemed as though the fates had turned their back on the side of light, giving the good fortune to darkness. What was one to do when even luck had abandoned you? And now he was dead.

_So what am I doing here?_ Hogwarts's former headmaster pondered. _Am I to fight the bull? But fight for what? My place in heaven?_ Dumbledore found it all very barbaric, but steeled himself. He was a warrior in life and if he must prove himself in the afterlife, so be it.

_And I laugh, 'Ha ha ha'  
I get it, I'm dead  
And this whole charade's  
A fight for my soul_

Dumbledore began to sweat in nervousness and anticipation. How exactly was he supposed to fight this bull? He didn't have a wand and he was an old man for Merlin's sake! Dumbledore cringed. If things here went as well as things had been going in life, he was about to experience a great deal of pain. Dumbledore gulped as the bull snorted and red dust swirled in the air from its exhalation.

_Red-eyed fiend  
Lunges, I turn while  
Skeletal picadors  
Stab away at the beast_

Barbaric seemed to be an understatement for this spectacle. Ghastly seemed more apt. Skeletons, veritable dementors with bleached bone clothed in black robes, mounted on what appeared to be threstrals and armed with spears attacked and goaded the red-eyed beast, riling it up, inciting its anger and willingness to attack.

_I lay, I lay, I lay, I lay  
I lay my eyes on the Devil  
Oh fate, once again I lay  
I lay, I lay, I lay_

Trying to turn his attention away from the beast that surely held his doom, Dumbledore examined the spectral audience. Ignoring the grunts from the bull and the shouts from the picadors, he scanned the homogenous crowd, before stopping, his attention arrested by…_a student?_

_There in the stands something grabs  
My attention  
Like it is calling to me  
It's a girl with eyes like the sea  
Is she an angel sent to watch over me?_

Yes, she was a student. Garbed in Ravenclaw robes, the headmaster recognized her. She was one of Harry's friends: Luna Lovegood. She was watching the bull placidly with her standard dreamy-eyed stare. Her large and rather bug-like blue eyes slowly turned his way.

_What was she doing here?_ Dumbledore asked himself. _Did she die as well? Oh, Merlin, tell me she's not dead! Tell me the Death Eaters didn't kill any of the students!_

_I lay, I lay, I lay, I lay  
I lay my eyes on the Devil  
Oh fate, once again I lay  
I lay, I lay, I lay_

Those blue eyes were sharper than Dumbledore had remembered them in life. The glazed aspect was missing, revealing the undercurrent of intelligence and cunning now blatant within them. Suddenly, Luna didn't seem like a 15-year-old girl. She seemed older, slyer, darker.

_Suddenly I remember  
The girl with eyes like the sea_

Luna Lovegood grinned, and Dumbledore knew her, knew that she wasn't that adorably-quirky little girl that wandered the halls of Hogwarts reading the Quibbler upside-down. He knew her how he should have always known her, how everyone always knows her. He knew why fate had abandoned the side of light, why the dark was winning. He knew that five years ago he had let evil itself in through the front door.

_I turn, she winks and she smiles gently  
While the bull runs straight into me_

There was a sharp pain and a cold stinging in his abdomen. An onyx horn had pieced his gut, and now warm blood was soaking his purple robes. The pain was intense, but the pain apparent in his countenance was there for another reason entirely. His greatest mistake, his greatest failing, was not falling for Tom Riddles's innocent façade, but for falling for the innocent eyes of someone much deadlier, someone much closer to Harry, someone inside the Order, someone who would extinguish the light side of magic forever.

_I lay, I lay, I lay, I lay  
I lay my eyes on the Devil  
'Blue-eyed matador,' I cried,  
'I fell for your wicked disguise.**'**_


End file.
